Thursday, January 10, 2013

Sketchy Thursday

Late last year Pantone announced that their colour for 2013 was Emerald. If you are not familiar with Pantone, in 1963, Lawrence Herbert, Pantone's founder, created an innovative system of identifying, matching and communicating colors to solve the problems associated with producing accurate color matches in the graphic arts community. His insight that the spectrum is seen and interpreted differently by each individual led to the innovation of the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM®, a book of standardized color in fan format.

From the Pantone website: Most often associated with brilliant, precious gemstones, the perception of Emerald is sophisticated and luxurious. Since antiquity, this luminous, magnificent hue has been the color of beauty and new life in many cultures and religions. It’s also the color of growth, renewal and prosperity – no other color conveys regeneration more than green. For centuries, many countries have chosen green to represent healing and unity.“Green is the most abundant hue in nature – the human eye sees more green than any other color in the spectrum,” said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “As it has throughout history, multifaceted Emerald continues to sparkle and fascinate. Symbolically, Emerald brings a sense of clarity, renewal and rejuvenation, which is so important in today’s complex world. This powerful and universally appealing tone translates easily to both fashion and home interiors".
In response to this colour choice, I've played around with some paints to try to get my own emerald, keeping in mind that it will never be an exact match but that's not really my point here.
I'm trying to find what I can create using emerald as a stepping stone. Here's what I did:
I set up my paints, sketchbook, and palette in front of my IPad so I could refer to the Pantone website. Remember that colour memory can be fleeting.....especially for me!

Then I did lots and lots of sampling combining the colours and trying a bit of yellow, a bit of blue, a bit of white and so on until I had several brush strokes that I thought were close. Then I painted a page of leftover colours for an interesting background for some notes I wanted to make.